Walt Disney once said, “you’re dead if you only aim for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.” Not only did I find this principle to be true, it was also well-executed on my recent trip to Disneyland - The Happiest Place on Earth, for all ages. Our group at the famous theme park was a mix of distinct personas, each with differing needs, wants, attention spans, likes, and dislikes.

Leading the pack was Sammy, a blonde three year old toddler who loves Mickey, taking naps, and is motivated by ice cream. Behind him was Chris, a 40 year old father of two, who just got promoted to the Sr. Vice President of Sales at a growing media company in the San Francisco Bay area. Chris drives a new BMW (with a car seat in the back), loves to golf, and can sell an ice cube to an eskimo. Then there was Jackie, a 33 yr old Marketing Director of a successful non-profit, who is a technology maven, passionate about the environment, and loves competitive cycling.

So just how does Disneyland market to and satisfy the needs of these three very different individuals? Sammy, Chris, or Jackie may not have interacted with the marketing team at Disneyland before, but they have undoubtedly been engaged by the outputs of persona-based marketing. Essentially, persona-based marketing is part-Hollywood characterization and part-business analytics. Companies typically reference individual personas - fictional characters created to represent different user types and demographics - to improve the effectiveness of targeted marketing initiatives.

Dave Cosgrove, Director of Global Marketing at TE Connectivity, strongly believes in the value of persona-based marketing. TE is a B2B manufacturer with customers across the globe in markets as diverse as aviation, automotive, broadband communications, and consumer electronics. For Cosgrove, persona-based segmentation is a key driver of TE’s marketing success. 

Cosgrove says, “Persona-based marketing is incredibly important to us. It identifies how a customer wants to interact with us, what’s important to them, and ultimately how they make decisions.”

Whether your business is a TE Connectivity or a Disneyland, you can realize three major benefits from adopting persona-based marketing tactics:

1. Better Understand Your Customer
   The first step is to determine who exactly is buying your product or service - and this involves more than just simple demographics. Personas remove the tendency to think of yourself as the customer, and instead to take a walk in their shoes: are they C-level executives or mid-level managers? What type of jargon do they speak? What do they do for fun? What keeps them up at night? 

   Determining the personality, behaviors, and pain points of your customer will help you to understand what motivates them to buy. Cosgrove explains that mapping out personas helps to clarify the concerns of the customer, such as: Are they risk averse? Are they time constrained? “These questions help us to deliver content, information and services in a way that is personalized and valuable,” says Cosgrove.

   Action: Research, interview and analyze your customers to create a persona map that describes each of your customers/buyers in detail.

2. Consistent, Yet Flexible, Messaging
   Now that you know your customers and have created distinct personas, it’s time to reach out. It’s important to identify how and where each of these personas are contacting you, where they’re at in the buying cycle, and how to best deliver your value proposition.  This allows your company to tailor the message, without losing consistency.

   TE’s overarching goal is to create an Exceptional Customer Experience, but that message is delivered differently to the CEO of an automotive company than it is to the IT Manager at a consumer electronics organization. Marketing automation systems, including Eloqua, have helped TE to automate lead capture, scoring, and routing across 14 different business units. Direct emails, information, and content are also delivered in a personalized, yet consistent, manner to customers around the globe.

   Action: Determine the messaging and delivery channels that will resonate best with each of your distinct personas.

3. More Advocates of Your Brand
   Customers are truly engaged when they feel known. Cosgrove notes that by intimately understanding its customers, TE can design a user experience that’s relevant and meaningful, which differentiates TE from its competitors. This “customer-obsession” is driving improved customer engagement and building advocates for the TE brand.

   Action: Give your customers what they want, when they want it, in a personalized and targeted manner. 

Watch Dave Cosgrove’s interview about Persona-Based Marketing here!

Contact Bluewolf today for more information about transforming your marketing organization.